Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s latest approval rating has plummeted to a truly pathetic minus thirty per cent, according to a poll of 2,000 British adults conducted by Opinium over 25-27 September. This is seventeen points less than it was two weeks ago and a staggering forty-nine points less than his first approval rating as Prime Minister back in July. Starmer is sinking like a stone.
This illustrates how turbulent the start to Starmer’s premiership has been and how unfit for government he is proving to be. Most noticeably, we have witnessed an intense backlash over plans to strip winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners. And, Starmer himself is embroiled at the centre of a freebies row.
In the latest embarrassment for Keir Starmer, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield resigned from the Labour whip. In a letter to Starmer, Duffield criticised his management of the Labour Party, saying that he had ‘never regularly engaged’ with backbench MPs and lacked ‘basic politics and political instincts’. Most tellingly, she highlighted the blatant hypocrisy of grabbing as many freebies as he can while taking away benefits from some of the neediest members of our society:
“Someone with far-above average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister.”
In closing her letter, Duffield expressed an anger that will resonate with many of those who so recently voted Starmer into Number 10: ‘The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.’
Back in 2019, Labour supporters disillusioned with Comrade Corbyn turned away from Labour and voted Tory in record numbers as the Red Wall turned Blue. Sadly, the Conservatives wasted this marvellous opportunity to do some good for this country. As a dilettante Old Etonian, Boris loved the idea of being PM but had no intention of doing the work required. Similarly, he was happy to impose draconian COVID regulations on the rest of us but felt that he and his friends were above the law and could party in Number 10 if they wanted to.
The Red Wall returned to Labour in 2024 and carried Starmer into Number 10 with an equally impressive majority. What will the Red Wall do when they become as sick of Starmer as they were with Corbyn? I doubt they’ll be fooled by the Conservatives again. Maybe, they’ll follow Lee Anderson MP’s path and vote for Reform.
Lee Anderson’s father Paul was a coal miner. Lee himself worked as a coal miner for ten years. A member of the National Union of Mineworkers and long-time Labour supporter, Lee was elected as a Labour councillor in 2015. He was a Brexiteer and defected to the Conservative Party in March 2018 because he was unhappy with how the Labour Party was being taken over by the hard-Left organisation Momentum and no longer serving the interests of its traditional supporters such as miners and their families.
He became a Conservative MP in 2019. Lee grew increasingly disillusioned with the Conservatives’ failed promises to stop the boats and get planes in the air to Rwanda and left them to become Reform’s first MP in March 2024. Lee’s politics have not changed. He has always been a champion of working people, like the miners. The Labour Party is no longer the party of the Red Wall, which voted largely in favour of Brexit and for whom immigration is a major concern.
0 Comments